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States the men who follow it are dominant in all that makes for independence and greatness. They are partakers in the enterprise which impels them to adopt improvements, in the energy with which a people must surmount difficulties, and in all the movements of a varied national life. Every attempt to push to success the demand for a depreciated currency has been made in States distinctly agricultural. Each one has failed most disastrously, and must fail again. In spite of all appeals, the man with the town lot, who lives in his own home; the man with the unencumbered farm, honest in his own business, and anxious to live under an honest government; the man with the pass-book, which records his savings; the pensioner, who, as a faithful soldier, has become the recipient of a popular bounty freely and liberally bestowed; the holder of a life insurance policy, who, whatever he may do, is still unlikely to vote to cheat his heirs; and the man whose name is borne upon a wages roll, may be relied upon together and of themselves to settle the fate of a set of men who have robbed a party and have avowed it to be their purpose to pass 'laws impairing the obligations of contracts.'

The pending canvass is a bitter one. Nothing since the war period has aroused so many passions. It is viewed not simply as an effort to change a fiscal system and so to unsettle values, but as an attack upon property, a threat to industry. Old party distinctions will disappear for the time, and every effort will be made to assert the national honour and to preserve public and private credit.

The American people have a way of carrying on a Presidential contest with as much energy when they feel sure of the result as when they must win every point. From this time forward they will take no chances; the new forces of disorder will have no rest. Anarchy, it may be assumed, is not to get its full meal among the intelligent, self-governing people of the United States.

GEORGE F. PARKER.

1896

ON THE ETHICS OF SUPPRESSION

IN BIOGRAPHY

IN his Historical Sketches, Cardinal Newman wrote as follows in reference to omissions in great histories:

Here another great subject opens upon us, when I ought to be bringing these remarks to an end; I mean the endemic perennial fidget which possesses us about giving scandal; facts are omitted in great histories, or glosses are put on memorable acts, because they are thought not edifying, whereas of all scandals such omissions, such glosses are the greatest.

But I am getting far more argumentative than I thought to be when I began, so I lay my pen down and retire into myself. (Vol. ii. p. 231.)

Cardinal Newman in his own person had a painful experience of the effects produced by the 'endemic perennial fidget' which he so aptly describes. They, who in his day managed Catholic affairs in England and at Rome for a long period of years, were possessed by this endemic fidget in regard to John Henry Newman himself. It broke out by fits and starts. Now, it was feared lest the illustrious Oratorian, by making admissions imposed upon him by a sense of justice and love of truth, or by accepting documents which, though impugned, he knew to be authentic, or by refusing to put the required glosses on historical facts, might give scandal to Protestants. Now, lest scandal to Protestants might be given by independence of judgment in criticising, on occasions, the policy pursued by ecclesiastical authorities; or in objecting to the unreasoning prohibitions imposed, at times, on legitimate freedom of action on the part of the laity. The mere mention of the name of Newman, or of his writings, or of advice given to his friends and disciples sent a shiver, as it were, through the letters which, for ten years or more, passed between Archbishop Manning and Monsignor Talbot of the Vatican. This endemic fidget in regard to Cardinal Newman endured to the end.

On the first appearance of the Life of Cardinal Manning the endemic perennial fidget of giving scandal to Protestants fell on the sudden, like a shiver penetrating marrow and bones, upon some effeminate or mistrustful Catholics among us. Many for a time lost their heads or their tempers, or both.

Fear of giving scandal to Protestants in matters which seem, however remotely or relatively, to touch the Catholic Faith, amounts

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in men of over-sensitive temperament or of limited capacity almost, in its acutest form at any rate, to mania. In their fear and fidget such men are incapable of discerning the distinction between the human agencies, which play their subordinate part and which in their nature are fallible and open to criticism, and the divine elements which sustain the Church in its infallible teaching-authority, and in its spiritual life.

Fear of giving scandal to Protestants was the cardinal element in the outcry which was raised against the publication of Cardinal Manning's letters, diaries, and journals. To take one instance only as an illustration: Fear accounted for the almost insane desire for the suppression of the now famous correspondence between Archbishop Manning and Monsignor Talbot. What wringing of hands, what gnashing of teeth, what lamentations were not uttered by good but timid Catholics lest scandal should be given! These pious people, happily but few in number, are mistrustful of their Protestant fellowcountrymen; mistrustful of the effect of simple historic truth; know not, or have forgotten, that in all ages the Church at times has had to bewail or reprove or condemn the human agents to whose hands the divine work had to be entrusted. The pure springs were, alas! but too often defiled. In the divine constitution of the Church such risk of evil was not excluded.

Even if in the diplomatic correspondence between Archbishop Manning and Monsignor Talbot at the Vatican, human motives may have obtruded themselves, or human weaknesses be at times detected, the guiding motive of Archbishop Manning's action was not, according to the evidence recorded, personal antipathies or a desire for selfadvancement, but a deep-rooted determination to safeguard in a critical transition period, and at all costs, no matter who suffered in the conflict, the interests of the Catholic Church in England. Even if Manning's action had been a corrupt intrigue; even if the Pope, by Monsignor Talbot's secret and underhand influence, in 'making,' as he himself declared, 'every other candidate impossible,' had been cajoled into an unrighteous nomination what then? Are corrupt intrigues at the Vatican to be suppressed lest scandal be given to Protestants, or is the truth to be told?

That is the vital question raised in the controversy of the last few months. It concerns not Catholics only, but non-Catholics. It concerns the British reading public, which loves truth and hates suppression of facts and documents, no matter what the motive, as almost a lie. The question touches nearly the honour and honesty of the literary world, and not of England only. The question has been taken up on both sides of the Atlantic: Is it a virtue to suppress historic truth or no? The broad issues once raised cannot now be evaded. The advocates of the art of suppression, in great histories or biographies, of historical facts, or of documents on which such

facts are based, are now trembling in their shoes. They cannot lay the Frankenstein's monster they have raised.

By force of circumstances, by its candour and outspokenness, and, perhaps, still more by the blunderings of its Catholic critics, the Life of Cardinal Manning is become a test-book, as it were: a criterion of the rival methods in the art of writing' history or biography. In all the lands where the English tongue is spoken, the question of the hour is asked: Is the publication of historical facts based on authentic documents almost a crime' or a virtue ?

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By a careful estimate it is computed that the Life has already been read in England and the United States, in the Colonies and India, by well-nigh 200,000 persons. As a consequential result of the unprecedented circulation of such a book, or rather as the result produced by action and reaction, it has been criticised over and over again by more than 200 writers in the daily and weekly press, in monthly reviews and magazines on two continents. And yet the authenticity of no single document has been impeached or imperilled.

In regard to this test-question the all but unanimous verdict is in favour of candour and truthfulness in biography as well as in history. They who run may read; unless it be those who elect to walk through life blindfold.

What readers at home and abroad are, perhaps, most concerned to learn from me is the opinion of Catholics, first in regard to the Life, and, secondly, as to whether truthfulness and candour in biography is a virtue or no. In the nature of things I am in a position to learn many opinions on the subject from various quarters which find no public expression. Numerous letters from Catholics come to my hands; many more from Anglicans and others. Many of the former indignantly complain of the suppression of their letters. Catholics of position and experience maintain that Catholic opinion on the Life of Cardinal Manning is not fairly represented in The Tablet or the Weekly Register. They draw a broad distinction between those Catholics who have read the Life and those who have only read criticisms in the Catholic papers. They who have read the Life as a rule, in the teeth of its many faults, approve of it; those who have only read Catholic reviews of it denounce it. I will give two typical instances: a priest only the other day denounced it as an abominable book,' but admitted he had not read it. This was in England. A nun in Australia refused to read the Life, which was within her reach, because she had heard it was a bad book.' Both priest and nun were honest. They took the opinion of their pet newspaper as gospel truth. They are types of fortunately not a numerous class. On the other hand, fervent and loyal Catholics of independent judgment, who far exceed both in numbers and capacity these good people who believe implicitly what is told to them, have read the book and find it neither bad nor abominable. Quite the contrary. I might justify

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this assertion by many quotations from letters sent to me by personal strangers, if space and modesty permitted.

Still more convincing, perhaps, than the opinion expressed in private letters is the judgment given in conversation by literary people, and at clubs, and in general society. One personage, a Catholic of high ecclesiastical position, of wide experience and knowledge of men, recently expressed the following opinion: The Life of Cardinal Manning justifies itself by results. By common consent it is acknowledged that a higher estimate has been formed alike by Catholics and Protestants of Cardinal Manning's character and career than was held before the publication of his Life.'

From the other side of the wall of separation which unhappily divides the Church of Rome and the Church of England—a wall, it is devoutly to be hoped, destined sooner or later, in the inscrutable designs of Providence, to be removed-I am enabled by the kindness of Lord Halifax to recite the following testimony given by his Grace the Archbishop of York: 'I always had a high opinion of Manning's powers, but since reading his Life I look upon him as a saint. The chapter on "Hindrances" is the most attractive and edifying record in the book.'

Such testimonies, however valuable as coming from representative men on either side, are in the nature of things dwarfed by the following words spoken a short time ago by his Holiness Pope Leo the Thirteenth. Though, of course, unofficial, these weighty words will be received with all the more reverence and gratitude inasmuch as they touch upon the test-question raised to-day in all the lands where the English tongue is spoken-namely, whether in great histories or biographies truth is a virtue or a crime?

Someone in the presence of the Pope was regretting that Manning's character should have been so hurt by what had appeared in his biography, and Pope Leo the Thirteenth spoke as follows: 'Truth is the only thing that matters. What would the Bible have been if the writers had considered the effect of what they wrote? What would have become of Mary Magdalene and her sin; what of Peter and his fall?' 1

Such a verdict is in keeping with all the known acts and utterances of his Holiness. It is not so long since that the well-known author of The History of the Popes, before recording the life of Alexander the Sixth, consulted Pope Leo. His Holiness's advice to the eminent German priest was in substance: Tell the truth and the whole truth, no matter though the reputation of a Pope should suffer thereby.'

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The correspondent-a personage of honour and truthfulness-who conveyed to me the above words of the Pope writes as follows: This is, as far as I can remember, what I heard, but of course it was spoken in Italian, and I cannot vouch for the accuracy of every word.' The accuracy of this statement is confirmed by another witness of equal authority.

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